


Wonder Why You Haven't Before (Think About Direction)

by one_of_those_crushing_scenes



Series: 616 Canon-Compliant One-Shots [1]
Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Canon Compliant, Card Games, Fraction's Hawkeye, Gen, Hawkeye (2012) #8, Hawkeye (2012) #9, Hawkeye Vol. 4 (2012), Missing Scene, Musing, hints of Carol Danvers/Jessica Drew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-30 11:24:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15095711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/one_of_those_crushing_scenes/pseuds/one_of_those_crushing_scenes
Summary: On a slow night at Avengers Mansion, Black Widow, Mockingbird, Spider-Woman, and Hawkeye are playing a friendly game of cards when a woman, unknown to three out of four of them, bursts into the mansion and creates a scene that throws their lives into chaos. Here are their reactions.(Takes place during the card game scene from Fraction’s Hawkeye 8-9.)





	Wonder Why You Haven't Before (Think About Direction)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from [Stand](https://youtu.be/AKKqLl_ZEEY) by R.E.M.

Natasha takes two chips from her stack and drops it in the center of the table.

Bobbi looks around the table at her opponents’ foreheads, then shrugs and does the same. “Sure, why not.”

“Not me,” Jessica says, chewing her lower lip. “I fold.”

Clint's turn.

The game is a little uncomfortable. It was Natasha’s idea to have an impromptu poker night, and Bobbi had agreed readily before realizing that Clint and Jessica were the only other people in the Mansion who weren’t currently on duty butlering.

Of course, being adults, none of them will admit to being uncomfortable—all of them hoping that if they don’t name the elephant in the room, it will fade away. So they sit around the folding card table, Clint Barton on one side, his ex-wife opposite him, his ex-girlfriend on his left, and his new girlfriend on his right. Pretending that this is completely normal. After all, they're all friends here, right?

Clint tosses in two chips to see the bet and another three to raise. Natasha follows suit, and Bobbi calls.

“I had an ace?” Jessica exclaims. “What the hell?” 

Bobbi jerks her thumb at Natasha. “Trained by the Red Room in espionage and deception,” she says. “What can you do.”

Natasha lets a hint of a smile show at the corner of her mouth. Clint snorts and shakes his head.

Between rounds, they bring out some more beer, and then Clint deals again. When the last card is dealt, they all bring their cards to their foreheads, facing out. In the background, they hear the doorbell ring.

Natasha looks around the table, face neutral. She nods, then silently slides three chips in.

The sound of the front door opening vaguely registers, and they can hear Jarvis conversing quietly with someone.

Bobbi’s just set her fingers on her stack of chips when they hear the visitor at the door say, “Clint Barton.”

The four of them exchange confused looks. Clint stands up, pushing back his chair with a squeak. “Jarvis, who’s there?” he calls, as he walks towards the front hall.

\--

Jessica can only stand there in shock as Clint promises the girl—the girl who burst into the Avengers Mansion and _kissed_ him, kissed her boyfriend on the mouth in full view of everyone—that he’s going to fix her problem, leading her out the door as she, Bobbi, and Natasha stand in a row and watch them leave.

“Clint Barton, ladies and gentlemen,” Bobbi says dryly. “The ever-unchanging Clint Barton.”

She can't believe what her eyes just saw. This girl in the red and pink minidress. Kissing Clint. This complete stranger, showing up out of nowhere...

She's had it all wrong, then. Knowing that Clint is driven mostly by emotion, she'd assumed that the threats lay in the women he's loved in the past. She's been so worried about the possibility of his leaving her for one of them that even being in the same room as any of them was enough to raise her pulse, to send her heart into her throat, and not for the usual reason. So focused on Clint's past that she didn't see this coming at all. A stranger? He cheated on her with a fucking stranger?

All this time, she’s stubbornly refused to feel bad for Bobbi. It’s so easy for her, Jess thought; for her and for Natasha and for Wanda. They’re so beautiful, they can have anybody they want—and when the time comes, they won’t let out an involuntary burst of pheromones in the middle of sex to cause their partner to look at them in disgust, jump out of bed, and ignore their phone calls, like the first and last time that Jessica acted on her attraction to women.

Sometimes, she thinks about having the courage to tell Carol how she feels, but then she imagines _that_ expression on Carol’s face and she knows that it can never happen.

At least with men, she doesn’t have to worry about that. That’s how the pheromones work—they make men want her and they make women disgusted by her. She always warns them what’s going to happen in advance of sex, so that the lines of consent are clear, but it’s never been a problem. And it’s better to be wanted than to be alone all her life. It's not like she dislikes men. Sex with men can be nice; can feel good, even. It's just that, in her fantasies... 

Well, not only are her fantasies never coming true, but neither is her backup plan, apparently. Did she say she doesn't dislike men? Ha! Men are idiots. Men are pigs. Men are worthless. This one, in particular. Thinks he can embarrass her in front of her teammates? She shoots a glance at Bobbi and Natasha—they're very much not looking at her. He never would have done this to them, she thinks. Maybe he could tell that she wasn't— _No_. This isn't her fault, and she needs to stop blaming herself for other people's actions. What he did was unacceptable, period. Rat bastard. She is _done_.

\--

The second the words come out of her mouth, Bobbi wishes she could grab them back.

She’s been angry with Clint, angry that he would throw away everything they had over someone he hadn’t even liked a year ago, someone she had thought was _her_ friend. Obviously, Jessica wasn’t the reason they’d broken up, but did he really have to jump into another relationship while the wounds were still fresh?

But this isn't normal behavior for him. Cheating on a girlfriend? The Clint she knows would never. Getting in over his head on a predicament—that's more like him, but usually he has a direction, some drive inside of him leading him on a chase. Right now, it looks like he's fumbling, being pulled along by external forces without agency. And he’s been different lately, not just tonight. Reckless. Taking risky shots, getting banged up harder than usual, inflicting more violence than he typically does. Fewer bar nights, fewer game nights, fewer movie nights. She’d put that one down to his having moved out of the city, but looking back on it, he’s been pulling away from all of them.

The more she thinks about it, the more obvious it is. She's been holding on to her hurt so hard that she missed the simple fact that none of this is about her. Their breakup isn't about her, his dating Jessica isn't about her, his recent distance _isn't about her_. How could she have missed it that he was depressed? 

God, she's such a jerk. 

Resolved, from this moment: One, she’s going to stop feeling sorry for herself. She’s an Avenger, a super-soldier, a leader of a short-lived but successful international counterterrorism agency—that’s nothing to cry over. Two, she’s going to drop any and all hard feelings against Jess. Whether or not Jess could have been more sensitive about the whole situation means nothing now—she certainly didn’t deserve _this_. Three, she’s going to help Clint, whatever it takes. What was it, exactly, that she'd said to Dom about Clint? “We love each other, but that doesn't mean we should be together.” Well, here's her chance to put her money where her mouth is. Clint was there for her when she needed it, jumping right back into the WCA for a final mission when he suspected she was being targeted, despite how uncomfortable the spy game made him, and then again when she got shot, he turned the world upside down to get that serum that ended up saving her. Now it's her turn.

Whatever it is, whatever’s going on with him, she needs more information if she's going to be of any use. She'll need to get closer in order to suss out the situation. She could drop by his new apartment, although that might be weird, since things have been frosty between them lately. She'll need some kind of excuse.

\--

Natasha knows what the other two women are thinking.

It’s not for nothing that she’s known as the best spy in the world. She’s been observing people and figuring out what makes them tick for longer than most of her friends have been alive, and she knows, without a doubt, that Jess is making up her mind to cut Clint out of her life, while Bobbi is figuring out how she can find a new place for him in hers.

Neither of them is wondering about the girl.

Not to toot her own horn, but redheads dragging Clint into trouble and getting him in over his head is something Natasha has plenty of experience with. She can't take back what she did to him, but she'll be damned if she lets it happen again, right under her nose.

 _I shot one—might have killed him._ That’s what the girl had said. And Clint had followed her, off to slay her dragons. Natasha wants to laugh. Had she been that transparent, back in the day? Played up the damsel in distress act, pitching her voice just a little too high and speaking just a little too fast, widening her eyes and projecting a vibe of helpless panic?

It’s not just an act, though. She knows that from experience, too. This girl is genuinely scared, and she’s definitely been wronged more than she’s wronged others. She needs help, but Clint is the wrong person to be getting it from. He’ll solve this girl’s problems, sure, but at what cost to himself?

Until recently, guilt hasn't been a major factor in Natasha's life. When she'd decided to cut strings with everyone—S.H.I.E.L.D., the Avengers, Clint—she focused on figuring out who she was when she wasn’t relying on other people, and she hadn’t had the luxury to revisit her sins, fresh as they were. And he’d landed on his feet, eventually. She could tell right away that Bobbi was good for him, and he really seemed to bloom out there on the West Coast, and later with the Thunderbolts. But now... lately, her guilty conscience has been knocking, reminding her of all sorts of things that she would have liked to leave in the past.

Logically, she knows that whatever is going on with that girl is not her fault. Her history with Clint Barton isn't some sort of twisted pseudo-Freudian imprinting thing where one time in his youth he was manipulated by a woman who was in a bad spot and now he's doomed to repeat the scenario over and over for the rest of his life. 

Still, what kind of person would she be if she didn't stop it? 

\--

“Oh, dear,” Jarvis says. The three of them turn around to look at him. “We'd better start making a plan.”

He closes the door.

**Author's Note:**

> The issue of Jessica’s powers are...murky, and her self-hatred doesn’t make it any easier. I think that if Jess were honest with Carol, Carol would understand and not be deterred. Hopefully, with practice and training, Jess could learn to control her pheromones and get rid of the cishet-normative limitations we usually see in canon.


End file.
